Over the past ten years, Karine Giboulo's artworks have been challenging the way our society works, taking a critical stance on various issues related to life in the first world: industrialization, capitalism, consumerism, hyper-consumerism, urbanization, globalization, worker exploitation, the growth of slums and megacities, and the ongoing isolation of the individual.The importance and scope of Giboulo's work justifies a retrospective exhibition at this point in her relatively young art career. Réalité / Utopie allows for an overview of her work's evolution in several mediums – drawing, dioramas, "life bubbles" – as well as her exploration of various socially and humanistically-oriented preoccupations. Both realistic and fanciful, these artworks abound with details. Giboulo stages figurines of people and animals made of polymer clay painted in bright colours within installations that evoke the world of childhood and draw the spectator in with their whimsical nature. However, the intention behind the work contrasts strongly with this playfulness, compelling the spectator to question and critique.
Continuing her reflection on habitats around the world, Giboulo took inspiration from a tower recently built in Shanghai (The Vertical City : Shanghai Tower) for the new work she has created for the exhibition, a futuristic and utopian architectural diorama. This tower, complete with a ground-floor level of boutiques, retirement home, parking lot and factories, rises up, cloud-like, to the stratosphere, dwelling-place of the elite.
Both weighty and accessible, realistic and utopian, poetic and rooted in the here and now, Réalité / Utopie invites us into a world that is playful in form, but whose content is resolutely demanding and critical.
Opening and guided tour on Saturday, September 13, 2014 at 2pm.